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WATCH:
▶ Nietzsche's Warning to Scientists:    • Nietzsche’s Warning to Scientists  
▶ Why Nietzsche Hated Socrates:    • Why Nietzsche Hated Socrates  
▶ Why Nietzsche Hated Plato:    • Why Nietzsche Hated Plato  
▶ Why Nietzsche Hated Kant:    • Why Nietzsche Hated Kant  

OUR ANALYSES:
▶ Beyond Good and Evil:    • NIETZSCHE Explained: Beyond Good and ...  
▶ The Antichrist:    • NIETZSCHE Explained: The Antichrist (...  
▶ Genealogy of Morals:    • NIETZSCHE Explained: The Genealogy of...  
▶ Twilight of the Idols:    • NIETZSCHE Explained: Twilight of the ...  
▶ The Will to Power:    • NIETZSCHE: Will to Power Explained (a...  
▶ Daybreak:    • NIETZSCHE Explained: DAYBREAK - Thoug...  
▶ The Joyful Science:    • NIETZSCHE Explained: The Joyful Scien...  

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Introduction
02:50 Apollo and Dionysus
06:05 The Dionysian Man
09:09 To be or not to be
12:41 Conclusion

In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche’s first work, he dedicates a few lines to an interpretation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. At this stage in his life, he was a firm believer in the philosophy of Schopenhauer.

He argues that Hamlet is the prototypical Dionysian man: he has seen the truth; the world is a place of endless suffering. This realization, explained by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche with their metaphysics of the Will, paralyses him.

It explains why throughout the play, Hamlet is so hesitant to kill Claudius. This hesitation has been the subject of major debate. Freud blamed it on the Oedipus complex. René Girard thought Hamlet was paralysed because of his realization that violence begets violence, and avenging his father’s death would be harmful, not just. Existentialists argued that Hamlet is too spoilt for choice, being radically free in the world, and therefore opts to not choose at all, being overhwelmed.

Nietzsche argues that Hamlet’s paralysis is the default state of the Dionysian man, the man who looks beyond the veil of illusion that Apollo (the World as Representation) enchants us with. The Dionysian man sees the world for the place of suffering that is; irredeemable, endless suffering. No action can make things right. So why kill Claudius? Why do anything at all? Why even live?

While Nietzsche only mentions Hamlet in passing, in this video we looks at the famous “to be or not to be” speech in the context of this interpretation.